Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima And Potsdam Analysis

Twenty years after Harry Truman ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb, scholars and citizens subscribed to the original version of the story: the President acted to avoid the invasion of Japan and lose anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000 American lives. Then in 1965, Gar Alperovitz published a the book “Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam”. He argues that the dropping of the atomic bomb “was not needed to end the war or to save lives” but was a message to the Soviet Union. Fifty years after the atomic bomb was dropped, Alperovitz said that the final answer to why the atomic bomb was dropped is “neither essential nor possible”. He also said,”What is important is whether, when the bomb was used, the President and his top advisers understood that it wa not required to avoid a long and costly invasion, as they later claimed and as most Americans still believe.” Alperovitz believes that if the bomb was not used, Japan might still have been made to surrender before the first American landing on the island of Kyushu.
Alperovitz argues that Truman and his Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, thought that if they did not end World War II by dropping the atomic bomb, America would not have added diplomacy strength against the Soviet Union. Alperovitz insists that the decision to drop the bomb could have bolstered the diplomacy objectives in Asia. For example, if the bomb was not dropped it could have created a more harmonious postwar relationship with the Soviet Union. How would Truman have ended the war without dropping the bomb and without having a large amount of casualties? Alperovitz says that the President could have been more eager to welcome the Soviets into the Asian